Nam Le - The Boat

He turned away from the sea and pointed out his family's house on the adjoining spur, along the winding saddle.

"That's you guys?" she asked.

"My mum used to come here to paint."

She let it pass. She said, "Your brother looks like you," then, noting his lack of enthusiasm, went on, "You'd think you'd get an awesome view from up here — of all places, right?" It came out in a single quick exhalation: "But you look and you look and everything's just shithouse." Skating her hands down the side of her pleated skirt: "Your friend, Cale, is he always high?"

"He's a good bloke."

She didn't seem happy with that.

"His girlfriend died in Europe," he added lamely.

"Europe?" Her voice twisted up.

"Yeah, he's been everywhere. Hawaii and Africa and everywhere, before he came here."

She chortled. "Why would anyone come here?"

Now she'd stopped bouncing, now she was brushing her hands together. Both of her hands were within reach.

"I mean," she said, "there's not even fish here anymore."

With other girls, it was just the next thing — hands, neck, pash, fingers under their tops. But with her, for him, nothing was next.

"C’arn, then," she said softly.

She eased forward and leaned her body into his bare chest. Her smile lopsided, bigger and bigger. Then her mouth sprang open and then they were kissing. He was kissing Alison Fischer. There was a mineral tizz on her tongue, the smell of wet rock. He lifted his hand to her hair.

"Ugh." She stepped back, soles crunching on broken glass. "It stinks in here." She skipped over to the opposite wall, standing beneath a deep, high crevice that might once have held a window. The wind even choppier in that corner.

"Animals come here for shelter," he said. Who'd told him that? The musty smell seemed familiar.

"Well, they stink."

She kissed him again. He felt the start of a hard-on, pressing through the mesh lining of his shorts — then quickly wilting. Maybe thinking about it. Maybe thinking about Dory. An awful lag behind this happening and the idea of it. She lifted her bib and wiped her mouth.

"Okay, then," she said.

"Sorry."

Wordlessly they looked out of the broken wall over the bay. The sun full in the sky. There was a blue kite on the wind and far below, way out on the ocean coast, the black half bodies of surfers, ducking into early-breaking waves or standing, slewing across the tall steep faces until they dropped into white slag. Every ride ended in failure. He'd never noticed this before.

"I'm not scared, you know."

He didn't say anything.

"Me and him aren't really together."

"Who, Dory?" He tried to sound nonchalant.

"Everyone just assumes." She smiled into the open, blustery air. "So how well do you know him? Are you guys, like, friends?"

"Dory?"

"No, the fucking postman. Yes, Dory."

"I mean," Jamie said carefully, "we play on the same team. He's a good ruck." He paused for a moment. "A good bloke."

"A good bloke," she mimicked.

He fell silent. The water of the bay seemed, if possible, to bulge. In that light it seemed as though the courthouse was tilting, about to slide into the ocean.

"See that?"

The kite hung in the high wind, still and full. Then a slip of color again. Way out a ship coughed up black smoke ever more feebly. He realized she was looking off to one side — past the dunes, past the old rock pier, even — to the low, wet lines of swale behind. Deep where it was dark, shallow where pooled with light.

"That's where he lives," she said. "With his uncle."

"Good fishing out there." Immediately, the rock pier imagined itself into his mind. Black and slick, lathered with surf. He'd managed, for so long, not to think about it.

"Their place, though — you wouldn't believe."

But it, too, was clear to him: one of those fibro, tin-roofed affairs, a single naked bulb shearing light through planked windows. He'd seen it from the boat. Stray dogs ganging outside.

"How much cash you got on you?" she asked abruptly.

"Cash?"

She stepped out from the stone recess and a breeze snapped up a fistful of her hair, suspended it above her head.

"We could go to the bottle shop," she said.

He thought frantically for a moment. "What about ID? Do you have — I know, we could get Cale's ID."

But she was already somewhere else in her head. It struck him she was bored with him. Without warning she came over and leaned into his shoulder and, slowly collapsing her knees, traced her upper lip — inch by inch — all the way down to the tips of his fingers. He stood there inside the stone walls, suffused in sun, shock-still, the hot tension through his body almost painful. What happened now?

"It's you!" She crinkled up her nose. "You! You stink of fish."

His cheeks flared red. "Shit," he said. He brought up his fingers and smelled them. Bait. "You're right. Shit, sorry."

She hopped back with a childlike little scowl. He struggled for an excuse and she watched him, letting him struggle, saying nothing. Finally he slinked off. Now she was saying something but he was too busy with shame to take in her final words. The easterly gusted up. Then, at the edge of the granite ruin, he forced himself to turn around.

"There's tonight," she called into the wind's low howl.

"What?" He cupped his ear.

"Thursday night," she was saying. "See you Thursday night."

***

HIS MUM WAS dying and seemed torn between ignoring it and rushing toward it. She wanted to meet it in the middle of many arrangements. After the first relapse — the scans, the taps, the tests — she sank back into her work, her only concession to the diagnosis being a switch from spatulas to paintbrushes. She spent even more time outdoors, painting, gardening. She was always a physical gardener: sporting Blundstone boots and a singlet, gloves up to her elbows and her ginger hair scrunched back with anything at hand — a rubber band, a torn strip from a plastic bag. She was indefatigable. If asked, she'd say it was just like pins and needles. What was the phrase people used? — she refused to become her illness. She beat it back.

Then, two years ago, the second major relapse. She claimed, afterward, that she didn't remember any of it. But she'd seen him. They'd seen each other. She'd lain on her side, the easel also knocked on its side. It was as though she'd been dancing with it and they'd tripped over together. Her face was compressed against the floor, strands of hair streaked diagonally across it, captured as though in a thrash of passion. Everywhere there was bright cerulean blue paint, the entire floor slick and sky-colored, a centimeter deep, leaching into her arms, her scissored legs, her smock and boots. Her palms were vivid orange.

"Mum," he said.

But she couldn't speak. The blue paint coated her lips — through it he saw the tip of her blue tongue — it matted her hair, enclosed her right eye like a face mask. That eye was open. It didn't blink. You could see. It was nightmare in her head.

"Mum?"

Never — it'd never been this serious. Once before, he'd come upon her slumped on the kitchen lino. Just dizzy, she'd said. She'd made him promise not to tell Dad. He knelt, now, watching her. He put out his hand but it seemed incapable of touching anything. Her eye roved, jerkily, like a puppet's, around the room — to him — away — to him again. She was frozen in the middle of her mangled sidestroke, the paint frothing in front of her mouth. Slowly it hardened into a lighter blue paste. He felt as if he were breathing it as well. Then the footsteps, the bottomed-out growl of his dad's voice — what happened, how long, how long — how long — the dark form crouching down, standing up, crouching down again and cutting off her hair, the crunch of the scissors, then stripping her up, limb by limb, out of the dry blue muck. A long pause.